Owners must listen to help the poor

Several approaches have been taken to alleviate poverty. Medical backgrounds say if there was affordable healthcare the poor would be healthy enough to improve their standard of living. Psychology backgrounds say if there was access to mental health treatment the poor would overcome their debilitating fears, anxieties and depressions that hinder them from advancing beyond sustenance. Yet Polak and Warwick have a good point; are we assuming we know what the poor need, or are we actually asking them? “Poor people themselves tell us that the main reason they are poor is that they don’t have enough money” (Polak, pg. 44).

Business is intimately concerned with the same problem the poor voice, the obtaining of capital. Although it will take the assistance of all the others in order to raise the poor out of their poverty, it seems business people are rarely consulted on this goal. Perhaps it is assumed business people would not be interested in such things, but Polak and Warwick think the world of business might be interested if they could see the profit “at the bottom of the pyramid” (Polak, pg. 7). Instead of thinking like business people, who are in search of the product or service that people will pay to have, we often see what other’s lack and wish to provide those things for them. Even business has at times failed to do this by creating cheaper versions of middle-class commodities in the mistaken ideal that the impoverished desire the same things (Polak, pg 7).

I’m torn between all of these good ideas and current reality. Even if, when it’s printed on paper, business could solve the problems of the poor through the marketplace, the corruption of business leaders, government officials, and the poor themselves defy all statistical models. Several generations of gifted and Christ-like business leaders might make a noticable impact, but that borders on wishful thinking. The opposite, a waiting-for-the-end-to-come mentality, isn’t appealing either. A middle ground must be held - one with a fair dose of hope because our God cares about righteousness and justice in the earth, for the poor and for the rich, and a realistic view of poverty that anticipates no simple solution or ultimate eradication in this Age. But whether I’m hopeful or hopeless, the principle that business serves its customers best when it doesn’t assume what they need is something I can take with me. This is my application.

References